Managing The Lactating Body: The Breast-Feeding Project and Privileged Motherhood

Drawing on interviews with twenty-five mostly white, educated, work-force experienced and class-privileged mothers, this paper explores how these women construct the lactating body as a carefully managed site and breast-feeding as a project—a task to be researched, planned, implemented, and assessed, with reliance on expert knowledge, professional advice, and consumption. The framing of breast-feeding as a project contrasts with the emphases on pleasure, embodied subjectivity, relationality, and empowerment that characterizes much of the recent breast-feeding literature across the humanities and social sciences. I argue that the project frame sheds light on the amount of work and self-discipline involved in compliance with broader middle-class mothering standards set in the consumerist, technological, medicalized, and professionalized contexts that shape parenting in late capitalist America.

Myths of Women and Their Reflection in a Therapy Group

One essential dilemma for modern clinical social work involves the relationship between the processes taking place inside the self and the social, cultural, and political developments affecting a person from the outside. The group-analysis approach focuses on four levels of relationships and communication within the group, among others a primordial level of shared myths, archetypical images, and the collective unconscious as an important component of psychotherapy. This article describes group-analysis therapy with women, analyzing a therapeutic process that used social myths to explore the formative institutionalization processes participants had undergone, thereby expanding themselves, growing, and changing.

The hybridization of organizational culture in tokyo disneyland

Tokyo Disneyland (TDL), a licensed version of the American theme park which was re-made in Japan, is a unique cultural, organizational and consumerist junction where “Japan” meets “America.” Offering an ethnography of this meeting, I focus here on the appropriation of the “Disney Way” into TDL's socialization practices of hiring and training. TDL's organizational culture is divided between an American influence that relates to part-timers and a Japanese tradition that applies to regular workers. It is discussed how local culture facilitated the successful transfer of the Disney Way to Japan while also promoting a modification of specific elements.     

Further results in the optimal policy for imperfect inspection in discrete time

The paper reports investigations into how the optimal inspection interval for a fallible system with imperfect inspection is best determined. This work can be viewed as an extension of Raz and Ladany's 1992 work on imperfect inspection in discrete time. Here the cost functions are rewritten to include a probability conditioning that was omitted. In addition, an upper bound on the search space for the optimal inspection interval is presented. This bound allows one to find the global optimum with very modest computational effort. Insights gained from this bound and from the computational tests are used to present some general properties of the system.     

A Transaction Cost Approach to Outsourcing by Households

Below‐replacement fertility and late marriage reflect, in part, the incompatibility of women's family and paid work roles. The outsourcing of childcare and housework to market and state service providers offers a strategy for reconciling work–family conflicts. By referring to the household as an organizational unit, I use the transaction cost approach (TCA) of organizational economics to discuss the factors that facilitate or impede outsourcing by households. In my analysis the frequency, specificity, and uncertainty level of the transaction, as well as normative and social beliefs, can facilitate or impede the household's decision to outsource. Monetary considerations, preferences, and government policies might moderate the effect of the transaction cost on this decision. The analysis further demonstrates that gender is an important factor, because transaction costs are often not distributed equally within households.     

Supply Chain Sourcing Under Asymmetric Information

We study a supply chain with two suppliers competing over a contract to supply components to a manufacturer. One of the suppliers is a big company for whom the manufacturer's business constitutes a small part of his business. The other supplier is a small company for whom the manufacturer's business constitutes a large portion of his business. We analyze the problem from the perspective of the big supplier and address the following questions: What is the optimal contracting strategy that the big supplier should follow? How does the information about the small supplier's production cost affect the profits and contracting decision? How does the existence of the small supplier affect profits? By studying various information scenarios regarding the small supplier's and the manufacturer's production cost, we show, for example, that the big supplier benefits when the small supplier keeps its production cost private. We quantify the value of information for the big supplier and the manufacturer. We also quantify the cost (value) of the alternative‐sourcing option for the big supplier (the manufacturer). We determine when an alternative‐sourcing option has more impact on profits than information. We conclude with extensions and numerical examples to shed light on how system parameters affect this supply chain.     

The Experience of Forced Relocation as Expressed in Children’s Drawings

Forced relocation of people from their homes due to changes in borders, war, or natural disasters has been recognized in the literature as a stressor which has affected communities throughout the world. However, the responses of latency-aged children to these stressors have not been sufficiently addressed. In an attempt to fill that gap, this article presents a phenomenological and diagnostic analysis of drawings made by Israeli children aged 7–9 who were evacuated from localities in the Gaza Strip area. The drawings indicate that the experience of forced relocation remained a significant one for the children, even 2 years after the event. The children’s drawings reveal the difficulties they experienced, as well as the coping strategies that they used to work through the experience and adjust to the situation. The drawings indicate that with the passage of time their perceptions of the evacuation were not traumatic. The main coping strategies reflected in the children’s drawings are defense and distancing mechanisms, as well as family and community support. In addition, the children included numerous ideological statements in their drawings, which evidently reflect an attempt to understand the meaning of the relocation, and emphasize their group affiliation. As a result, it is important to include the components of ideology, community, and family in evaluations and psychosocial interventions in order to promote the children’s constructive coping.     

Is the coefficient of variation a valid measure for detecting sincerity of effort of grip strength?

The wide use of the coefficient of variation in detecting sincerity of effort is puzzling since existing research findings regarding its effectiveness are contradictory. The lack of empirical support in the literature raises the question of whether or not the coefficient of variation is a valid measure for detecting sincerity of effort. Many clinicians, especially those who use a computer software to calculate the coefficient of variation, may not understand how the coefficient of variation is derived and what it is based on. The coefficient of variation is a measure of relative variability and would be used correctly only if the average and the standard deviation of grip strength trials increased proportionally. This case study, however, demonstrated that the average and standard deviation of grip strength are independent. Thus, the coefficient of variation is not a valid measure of sincerity of effort. In addition, this study indicated that the coefficient of variation may be inflated in individuals after carpal tunnel release surgery. The author, therefore, cautions clinicians against the use of the coefficient of variation as a measure of sincerity of effort especially in injured individuals with compromised hand strength.     

Perceptions of suicide and their impact on policy,discourse and welfare

In recent years, there has been an increase in suicide rates throughout the Western world. However, psycho-social responses to the problem are limited, as is public awareness of suicide and its consequences. This article presents findings from a survey on public attitudes toward suicide in Israel. The survey was conducted among a representative sample, and examined the extent to which the problem is a public priority for developing interventions aimed at preventing and reducing the rates of suicide. The findings revealed that despite the prevalence of suicide in Israel, and even though many of the participants had been personally acquainted with the families of suicide victims, suicide still ranks low on the hierarchy of bereavement. The Israeli public is ignorant about suicide, and does not consider it a problem that calls for government intervention and accountability. The study highlights the need for social workers to play an active role as social agents in an attempt to change the social ‘bereavement pyramid’ perception and effect on government policy toward suicide.     

Ergonomics in a hospital and a university setting: The effect of worksite analysis on upper extremity work-related musculoskeletal disorders

OBJECTIVES: The purpose of this study was to determine whether individuals with work-related injuries receiving worksite analysis would have less lost workdays than individuals not receiving worksite analysis. Therapeutic management of work-related injuries in a hospital and a university setting were also compared. STUDY DESIGN: Over a one-year period, employees who sustained an upper extremity work-related injury were issued questionnaires regarding their injury, treatment, functional status and pain level. Participants were divided into three groups: group 1 consisted of hospital employees (N=14) who underwent worksite analysis, group 2 included university employees (N=15) who underwent worksite analysis whereas group~3 included university employees (N=14) who underwent no analysis. RESULTS: All groups were similar in demographics, functional status, and pain level. Satisfaction with the worksite analysis was similar for groups one and two. CONCLUSION: A pattern of less absenteeism but greater modified duty days was associated with those individuals undergoing worksite analysis.